1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a recording apparatus for performing recording on a recording medium.
The recording apparatuses to which the present invention is applied includes a printer, a copying machine, an electronic typewriter, a facsimile apparatus, and the like.
2. Related Background Art
A color printer will be described below as an example of the recording apparatus.
In recent years, color printers for printing displayed color images such as color computer graphic or color video images have been increasingly developed. An available example of a color printer based on a thermal transfer method using a thermal head is a printer in which a thermal head transfers an image onto recording paper by using an ink sheet on which color materials of yellow (Y), magenta (M), cyan (C), and black (Bk) are coated, thereby obtaining a multi-color, multi-harmonization color image.
Typical examples of the ink sheet for use in color recording are a sublimable ink sheet on which a sublimable ink is coated and a fusible ink sheet on which a fusible ink is coated. In general, the sublimable ink sheet is suited to harmonization recording but requires expensive special recording paper having an ink receiving layer. The fusible ink sheet enables recording on inexpensive plain paper but is not suited to harmonization recording.
Conventionally, thermal transfer recording using the sublimable ink sheet or fusible ink sheet is realized by an exclusive thermal transfer printer. For this reason, in order to change an ink sheet to be used in accordance with the kind of data to be printed or printing cost, at least two printers must be prepared. This is an economic burden on the user. Therefore, a demand exists for a thermal transfer printer capable of selectively mounting the two kinds of ink sheets to perform recording.
In order to realize such a thermal transfer printer, the above problem in which reproducibility of harmonization varies in accordance with the kinds of ink sheet must be solved. That is, for example, if a thermal head is driven as in the case of the sublimable ink sheet in order to perform harmonization recording using the fusible ink sheet having low harmonization reproducibility, recording is performed by different harmonization levels due to a difference between properties of the two ink sheets.